


Don't Keel Over Now

by yet_intrepid



Series: fool enough to fight [9]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Blood and Injury, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Shiro (Voltron)'s Missing Year, Suicidal Thoughts, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 21:56:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11814984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yet_intrepid/pseuds/yet_intrepid
Summary: Shiro won his fight, but he's not sure he'll survive the aftermath.Voltron Whump Week: Prompt: Blood Loss





	Don't Keel Over Now

“Get up!”

Shiro is trying. He’s really, really trying, but he’s dizzy and the ground is swirling and every time he shuts his eyes, he just want to let the blackness take him.

“Get up!” The guard yells it at him again, then follows it up with a string of Galra curses that Shiro is too slow to translate. When he follows that with a kick to the face, Shiro reels, falls on his back. On his wound.

How did he even win this fight, he wonders distantly as he screams. He knows he did, remembers driving the sword home before letting himself fall, but in the pain that overwhelms him, that knowledge makes no sense. He should be dead, and he’s glad he’s not, but it hurts and unconsciousness is beautiful, tempting.

“Get up!”

He pries his eyes open again and finds a blaster in his face. And no, no, he can’t get killed now, not when he _won_ —but that means he has to get up, and he doesn’t know if he can.

But he tries. God, he tries, gritting his hands into fists and planting them in the arena sand. Pushing, pushing. Dragging his barely-responsive legs until they’re under him, until he’s kneeling, until he can look down and see just how much blood is soaking into the dirt beneath him.

It’s…a lot. Really a lot.

Okay, Shirogane, he tells himself. Don’t think about that. Just about getting up, getting back to your cell. Then you can think about the blood.

As he digs the toes of one unsteady foot into the sand, one of the robots grabs at his arm and pulls him upwards. Shiro unbalances and his knees buckle. Dizziness is a symptom of blood loss—

But don’t think about it. Don’t think about the blood. Just think about moving, about not getting shot, about—and then the robot is dragging him, the Galra guard gripping his other arm, and he’s screaming because it hurts and it hurts and he doesn’t want to die.

He’d rather walk, but they’re pulling him along faster now and Shiro realizes it’d be impossible to get to his feet. So he slumps in their grasp and tells himself to be glad that his stomach, not his slashed-up back, is what’s being dragged over the cold floor.

Still, it hurts and it hurts and he wonders if they’re taking him to the druids, which would be good because they always heal him up eventually and bad because they usually do something worse first, and as he struggles against the blackness he wonders whether to hope for the druids or not. He doesn’t want to; even thinking about the lab would make him throw up if he had enough energy for it. But he doesn’t, and if this wound goes untreated—if he’s dropped in his cell to bandage himself as best he can and lie in the dark wondering about infection—well. If it goes untreated, he’ll probably die.

And it’s almost a relief, except that Shiro doesn’t want to die alone. That’s why he’s been trying to win, why he’s been fighting back in the arena and keeping his head down outside of it, why he’s still eating, why he hasn’t slit his own throat in front of the jeering crowds. He wants to die with someone who’s going to remember him. He wants to die _loved_.

And so he has to wait, because no one loves him here; no one gives enough of a fuck even to offer him a blanket or a painkiller. But the druids, for whatever reason, don’t want him dead, and so they’re his only chance.

Shiro drags in air just so he can scream again, and then he grits his teeth. They’ll take him to the druids, he tells himself. It’ll be awful, but it’ll end. He can make it. They’ll do whatever horrible thing they want to do, and then they’ll heal him up just enough and throw him back into the cells to work out the rest. He can make it. He can. It’s only pain.

It’s only pain, Shirogane, he repeats to himself, as it hurts and as it hurts and as the dizzying blackness takes him.


End file.
